


Stay Alive

by yamcasserole



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, Songfic thing I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 07:06:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5699449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yamcasserole/pseuds/yamcasserole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Turns out she was pretty good at not dying, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay Alive

_Stay alive..._

Don't die.

_Stay alive..._

Be a big girl, and don't die. Simple enough. Wake up. Heart beats. Lungs breathe.  ~~Lambert will never wake up again. Fisher's heart no longer beats. Hui's lungs don't breathe anymore.~~

_Outrun._

They'd planned for this, of course. When things took a turn for the worse, her crew had been prompt, methodical. They knew how much rested on their ability to get off the Hephaestus. They worked accordingly. They worked quickly. Not quickly enough. Death worked faster.

_Outlast._

Three times she'd nearly died. An explosion in engineering. A "malfunction" in life support after Rhea went offline. The seaweed brew that smelled even worse than usual and singed a hole in the table when she spilled it. All three times, she'd survived by virtue of her crewmates' quick thinking, her own precautions, or sheer dumb luck. She was fortunate.  ~~Or unfortunate. Would've been easier to die early on. To not have to see the rest.~~

Every night, the attempts on her life played on a loop in her mind, punctuated by Fisher's screams, Hui and Lambert's coughing, the sickening static of Rhea fizzling out into oblivion, the final, hopeful message Fourier had sent over the comms. She wasn't sure which hell was worse, waking or dreaming. 

_Hit 'em quick, get out fast._

It was just her and Selberg now, and she finally knew. Not that she hadn't suspected. She was an old pro at suspicion by now. The paranoia didn't have an off switch, but it was keeping her alive. Overall a good thing, she told herself. The only downsides were the shaking she could never quite rein in, the inability to sleep for more than a couple hours, the feeling of suffocating dread that followed her everywhere. The racing heart that could, as of a few hours ago, set off a bomb and blow her into smithereens if she wasn't able to control her panic.

The bomb. She was working with limited time since the moment she had switched it on. It was only a matter of time before Selberg found out and forced her hand. If that bomb had to go off, it would damn well be her decision, not his. She struck in engineering. A well-placed blow to the head and Selberg floated limply beside the engine, drifting into a tangle of wires. She raced to her ship, not looking back to see if he was breathing. It didn't matter. There would be plenty of time to look back later. To remember. 

_Stay alive until this horror show is past._

Her ship was ready. The startup sequence went about as well as it ever would. Time to go, then. Goddard would have hell to pay.

_We're gonna fly a lot of flags half-mast._

For her crew. For Fourier, Fisher, Rhea, Hui, Lambert. For any other unsuspecting souls they'd sent to die. For the damage they'd done. For the corpses she'd had to flush out the airlock, because what else was she supposed to do? It's not like there was a fucking Pryce and Carter tip on what to do when your friends die of an unknown disease in the middle of your deep space survey. Yes, Goddard would pay dearly. Soon, so soon, she could teach Mr. Cutter what it felt like to have everything he loved ripped away. 

She could just barely make out the Hephaestus, getting smaller and smaller until all she could see was the void of space. It gave her a brief moment of relief to see the ship whose walls had become her prison fade away. She turned to the cryo container, letting out a short, harsh laugh as she realized. Here, then, was another prison to replace the one she'd just left behind. The was room enough to share with the ghosts.

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics from Hamilton, I don't own anything, etc etc.


End file.
